Tuesday Fifth Week Lent

Mass Readings For today are here

Gospel 

Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.


Where I am going you cannot come.”


So the Jews said,
“He is not going to kill himself, is he,
because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”


He said to them, “You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.


That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.”


So they said to him, “Who are you?”


Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning.


I have much to say about you in condemnation.
But the one who sent me is true,
and what I heard from him I tell the world.”


They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.


So Jesus said to them,
“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.


The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him.”


Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.


 Above from the wonderful Scottish poet, artist and sculptor Ronald Rae. See my previous 2010 post on him with his sculpture of The Fallen Christ here.
 
The part of the gospel that stays with me today is the phrase 

"Where I am going you cannot come.”

That hurts so much .......
 

Jesus says the same thing to the disciples later on in John's Gospel ( with a different explanation related to the need for Him to go before the Holy Spirit can come later at Pentecost) but in this context it is to the Pharisees who will never believe what He is and who will actively seek to destroy Him.

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